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J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2003;74:419-422 doi:10.1136/jnnp.74.4.419
  • Paper

Occipital hypoperfusion in Parkinson’s disease without dementia: correlation to impaired cortical visual processing

  1. Y Abe1,2,
  2. T Kachi2,
  3. T Kato3,
  4. Y Arahata2,
  5. T Yamada2,
  6. Y Washimi2,
  7. K Iwai1,2,
  8. K Ito3,
  9. N Yanagisawa4,
  10. G Sobue1
  1. 1Department of Neurology, Nagoya University School of Medicine, Nagoya, Japan
  2. 2Department of Neurology, Chubu National Hospital, Aichi, Japan
  3. 3Department of Biofunctional Research, National Institute for Longevity Sciences, Aichi, Japan
  4. 4Department of Neurology, Kanto Rosai Hospital, Kanagawa, Japan
  1. Correspondence to:
 Dr Y Abe, Department of Neurology, Chubu National Hospital, Obu, Aichi 474–8511, Japan; 
 yujiabe{at}chubu-nh.go.jp
  • Received 5 August 2002
  • Revised 22 October 2002

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to analyse changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) without dementia.

Methods: Twenty eight non-demented patients with PD and 17 age matched normal subjects underwent single photon emission computed tomography with N-isopropyl-p-[123I]iodoamphetamine to measure rCBF. The statistical parametric mapping 96 programme was used for statistical analysis.

Results: The PD patients showed significantly reduced rCBF in the bilateral occipital and posterior parietal cortices (p<0.01, corrected for multiple comparison p<0.05), when compared with the control subjects. There was a strong positive correlation between the score of Raven’s coloured progressive matrices (RCPM) and the rCBF in the right visual association area (p<0.01, corrected for multiple comparison p<0.05) among the PD patients.

Conclusions: This study showed occipital and posterior parietal hypoperfusion in PD patients without dementia. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that occipital hypoperfusion is likely to underlie impairment of visual cognition according to the RCPM test, which is not related to motor impairment.

Footnotes

  • Funding: this research was partly supported by a Health Sciences Research Grant for Comprehensive Research on Aging and Health and a Health Sciences Research Grant for Research on Brain Science from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan.

  • Competing interests: none declared.

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